Talk Radio and Web Reports

Feb. 16, 2016 | BCGAVEL.COM — It was the winter of 1993, and Phil Saviano was scouring microfilm in Boston College’s O’Neill Library, feeding reel after reel into the reader, copying and printing articles that would prove especially useful in his investigation. BC’s extensive collection of Catholic publications and its copies of the Catholic directories proved to be revealing, both for Saviano’s research and later, for the investigations of The Boston Globe’s ‘Spotlight’ team. READ STORY

Feb. 5, 2016 | PEOPLE.COM — He no longer belongs to any sort of organized religion, but Phil Saviano, whose pivotal role in exposing the child sex abuse scandal within the Catholic Church is showcased in the Oscar-nominated film Spotlight, appears to have had something almost like divine intervention on his side. READ STORY AT PEOPLE.COM

NOVEMBER 2015 | HUFFPOST LIVE – In 2002, child abuse survivor Phil Saviano blew the lid off the Catholic clergy abuse by coming forward to the Boston Globe. Saviano joins us, along with actor Neal Huff who portrays him in the new film, “Spotlight,” to tell his story. WATCH VIDEO BROADCAST

October 2015 | SNAP New England leader talks with UK reporter about his childhood abuse, how having AIDS in 1992 freed him up to find the courage to go public with his story of abuse, and also how he feels about having actor Neal Huff portray him in the Spotlight movie.WATCH VIDEO

JUNE 2010 | MINNESOTA PUBLIC RADIO – Phil Saviano had a chance to meet the woman who gave him a kidney nine months ago shortly before the two had surgery in a Boston hospital. He is spending six days in the Twin Cities with Susan Pavlak, the woman with whom he shares not only a kidney, but also a troubled past and now a friendship. READ REPORT, LISTEN TO BROADCAST

January 12, 2007 – By Rachel Martin, NPR
Five years ago this month, The Boston Globe published a series of reports exposing widespread allegations of sex abuse by clergy in Boston and efforts by the Catholic Church hierarchy to cover it up.

According to the Globe, 130 people claimed to have been sexually abused by Father John Geoghan, and church officials had known about the abuse and covered it up. The scandal triggered a chain reaction. Thousands of victims of clergy sex abuse around the country went public and filed suit, creating a scandal that rocked American Catholicism and has cost the Catholic Church more than $1 billion.

April 5, 2005 | Phil Saviano returns to the University of Massachusetts in Amherst, where he spent his college days in the early 1970s. He is on campus to give a speech as part of the University’s sex assault awareness and prevention program. Radio Host Bob Paquette talks to Phil about his years of public involvement in the clergy abuse issue.

JUNE 2003 | Sean O’Malley is appointed to be the Archbishop of Boston, replacing the Cardinal Bernand Law who had resigned six months previously. David’s guests are Attorney Eric MacLeish, SNAP leader Phil Saviano and Philip Lawler. They and listeners who call in to the show attempt to answer the questions, What can the new archbishop do? What should he do? to regain the trust of the Greater Boston Catholic community which has been shattered by the revelations that scores of priests have sexually preyed upon vulnerable children.

Recorded broadcast from the Philadelphia NPR radio station, WHYY features a discussion on the unfolding Catholic clergy abuse crisis. Guests include SNAP’s Phil Saviano, Catherine Rossi, the director of communications for the Archdiocese of Philadelphia, and Rev. James Gill, a psychiatrist and Jesuit priest working at the Institute of Living, a residential psychiatric hospital in Hartford, CT. Note that three years after this broadcast, in September 2005, a Grand Jury announced findings that Philadelphia Cardinal Bevilacqua and his predecessor orchestrated a systematic cover-up spanning four decades. They managed to shield from criminal charges 63 priests who had molested hundreds of children.

New England SNAP Leader Phil Saviano joins the Worcester Talk Radio Station WTAG for the Friday Evening Roundtable with hosts Bob Holtz and Bob Hokinson. The program is devoted to a wide-ranging discussion of the exploding Catholic clergy sex abuse crisis, fueled by reporting of the Boston Globe Spotlight Team.